New Delhi

The government is planning to shift the responsibility of procuring and distributing pulses to states while the Centre will play a supervisory role in the functioning of Rs 11,000 crore price stabilisation fund (PSF).
Since the fund is huge and the procurement has to be completed within a specified period, states will do a better job if they are provided the necessary policy support and funds, sources in the consumer affairs ministry said.

Senior BJP leader and Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman brushed off the scathing accusations made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, calling it the “rhetoric of a loser, devoid of substance”. “The Congress president and his party loses no opportunity to mock the Hindu religion and its rituals. The story he narrated of some priest asking him for a wall of gold for the temple is an example. This is a party that has questioned the very existence of Shri Ram.

Monday is going to be a tough day for the ruling party. The YSR Congress and the Telugu Desam Party will pitch for taking up their notices of no-confidence motion against the NDA government when the Lok Sabha meets. The government has numbers to sail through the no-confidence motion but the timing of revolt by the regional parties against the centre in the BJP’s penultimate year in office does not bring cheer to the ruling camp seeking return in 2019.

Banks in India are sitting on a cashpile of over Rs 11,300 crore with no claiments. This money is lying unclaimed in ov­er 3 crore accounts in 64 ba­n­ks spr­ead ac­ross the country.

According to a recent report by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), with Rs 1,262 crore unattended money the State Bank of India (SBI) tops the list of lend­ers. SBI is followed by Punjab National bank with aro­und Rs 1,250 crore in its vaults. The rest is lying unclaimed in 62 banks, indicates the RBI data.

With only 16 per cent of the summary sales returns under the goods and services tax (GST) matching with the final returns, the revenue department has started to analyse major gaps with a view to check any possible tax evasion.

Even as the new goods and services tax (GST) regime is settling in, there seems to be growing unease among central indirect tax officers over re-designation of their state counterparts.

Claiming that this, along with other issues, are obstacles in trade facilitation and could also affect revenue collection, a senior central goods and services tax officer has sought direct intervention from the revenue secretary in the matter. He has proposed to redesignate inspectors and superintendents to bring them at par with state officers in the same rank.

India is likely to be ready by 2023-2025 to phase out many of the existing exports sops not just to be WTO-compliant but also because growth is likely to be higher by then, commerce ministry sources said.

The government was moved to review the current export subsidy programme after the US recently dragged India’s export promotion schemes to the WTO saying the subsidies by India were harmful to American interests.